BALTIMORE — A new tabletop game on the crowdfunding site Kickstarter has nearly reached full funding due to the promise of a unique combination of popular play styles for an experience designed to destroy friendships.
“I was sick of the same mechanics that could be picked up after a few rounds with minimal confusion. So I took the concepts of alignment charts, engine building, and victory points and made them interconnected, incorporating player deception, and added mystery elements,” said Jordan Boatman, ‘Realm of Elven Spire’ creator. “We did extensive playtesting at conventions, with multiple screaming matches, overturned tables, and thrown Celsius cans. At Strategicon, a tester broke another player’s nose with a Gloomhaven box, I knew I was on to something.”
Beta testers were taken in by the complexity and the esoteric presentation.
“I’ve been playing TTRPGs for decades, I don’t need hand holding like these dilettantes who saw ‘Stranger Things’ and are just jumping in now,” said funder Harold Sommer as he dug through a plastic bin of unpainted miniatures. “I invest my time and read the guides and I do not hesitate to call out shenanigans. With Elven Spire, enforcing the rules is the game and lying is the point. I can’t wait to bring it to Hobby Game Night at the library and show those newbies what gaming really is, laughing when they try and calculate the victory points using the reverse credit system.”
“Realm of Elven Spire” received a dubious endorsement, as a pre-release edition sparked a rift between hosts of a gaming YouTube channel.
“We take complicated game mechanics and break them down, but we just couldn’t agree on the most basic elements of the game. Even beyond the character traits which both needed to be memorized and hidden from other players, the play style seemed to be both co-op and competitive. The card actions were unclear, both in direction and font and type color. Ryan [Lukas, co-host] insisted that these were deliberate complications for the distinguished gamer and I felt they were just the sloppy play design of a grifter” said Siobhan Hannigan, former co-host of ‘Manual Dexterity.’ “We tried to consult the manual, but it was written in character by Yohai, the Dishonest Elf, which only raised more questions. We both said things we can’t take back and we are on indefinite hiatus.”
When reached for comment, Boatman evaded questions about mods and expansions, preferring to announce his next project, a social deduction game where players have to memorize all the characters and their individual skills and lie to each other in every conversation in perpetuity.
